Chapter 2: Origin of the Anglo-Americans, and its Importance in Relation to Their
Future Condition

[Editor's note: Readers come to
this page from different web sites:

Some come from our "Anti-Separation of Church and
State" page, which shows the role of Christianity in the founding of America;

others come from our Vine
& Fig Tree in History page.

It is impossible to appreciate the Vine & Fig Tree
vision without recognizing the Christian/decentralist impetus behind it.

It is not a secular vision, nor is it political (statist).

Early America was likewise Christian and intolerant of statism and
British monarchism/aristocracy.

The following passage from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America shows
the three major, neglected themes in colonial history:

Morality (religion)

Aristocracy

Land

If you secularize history, you miss the religious forces, and you must then diminish
the morality which drove the colonists. It is true that some opposed monarchy and
oppressive aristocracy out of greed and strictly commercial interests. But the stronger
forces seem to be Christian/moral. Even Thomas Paine argued against
monarchy on Biblical grounds. A moral and religious people will not stand for statist
monarchy. Instead of being slaves, they are free. Instead of fearing totalitarian
oppression, they are safe and peaceful. Vine & Fig Tree can only be achieved by a devout and
moral people. A moral repulsion at the politics of Bill Clinton is seen in this excerpt
from de Tocqueville:

Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, Vol.1, p.26

Utility of knowing the origin of nations in order to understand their
social condition and their lawsAmerica the only country in which the starting-point
of a great people has been clearly observableIn what respects all who emigrated to
British America were similarIn what they differedRemark applicable to all
Europeans who established themselves on the shores of the New WorldColonization of
VirginiaColonization of New EnglandOriginal character of the first inhabitants
of New Englandtheir arrival Their first lawsTheir social
contractPenal code borrowed from the Hebrew legislationReligious
fervorRepublican spiritIntimate union of the spirit of religion with the
spirit of liberty.

The emigrants who came, at different periods to occupy the territory now covered by the
American Union differed from each other in many respects; their aim was not the same, and
they governed themselves on different principles. These men had, however, certain features
in common, and they were all placed in an analogous situation. The tie of language is
perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind. All the emigrants spoke
the same tongue; they were all offsets from the same people. Born in a country which had
been agitated for centuries by the struggles of faction, and in which all parties had been
obliged in their turn to place themselves under the protection of the laws, their
political education had been perfected in this rude school, and they were more conversant
with the notions of right and the principles of true freedom than the greater part of
their European contemporaries. At the period of their first emigrations the parish system,
that fruitful germ of free institutions, was deeply rooted in the habits of the English;
and with it the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had been introduced into the
bosom of the monarchy of the House of Tudor.

The religious quarrels which have agitated the Christian world were then rife. England
had plunged into the new order of things with headlong vehemence. The character of its
inhabitants, which had always been sedate and reflective, became argumentative and
austere. General information had been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind had
received a deeper cultivation. Whilst religion was the topic of discussion, the morals of
the people were reformed. All these national features are more or less discoverable in the
physiognomy of those adventurers who came to seek a new home on the opposite shores of the
Atlantic.

Another remark, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to recur, is applicable not
only to the English, but to the French, the Spaniards, and all the Europeans who
successively established themselves in the New World. All these European colonies
contained the elements, if not the development, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to
this result. It may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants
had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and the powerful do
not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty
and misfortune. It happened, however, on several occasions, that persons of rank were
driven to America by political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a
gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a
territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and
interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was
prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at the
same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor
cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that
supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property
handed down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation
may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness, but unless those fortunes are
territorial there is no aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the
poor.

All the British colonies had then a great degree of similarity at the epoch of their
settlement. All of them, from their first beginning, seemed destined to witness the
growth, not of the aristocratic liberty of their mother-country, but of that freedom of
the middle and lower orders of which the history of the world had as yet furnished no
complete example.

In this general uniformity several striking differences were however discernible, which
it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be distinguished in the Anglo-American
family, which have hitherto grown up without entirely commingling; the one in the South,
the other in the North.

Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took possession of it in
1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are the sources of national wealth was at
that time singularly prevalent in Europe; a fatal delusion, which has done more to
impoverish the nations which adopted it, and has cost more lives in America, than the
united influence of war and bad laws. The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold,
adventurers, without resources and without character, whose turbulent and
restless spirit endangered the infant colony, and rendered its progress uncertain. The
artisans and agriculturists arrived afterwards; and, alt ough they were a more moral and
orderly race of men, they were in nowise above the level of the inferior classes in
England. No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the foundation of these
new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced, and this
was the main circumstance which has exercised so prodigious an influence on the character,
the laws, and all the future prospects of the South. Slavery, as we shall afterwards show,
dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and
pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity
of man. The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners
and the social condition of the Southern States.

In the North, the same English foundation was modified by the most opposite shades of
character; and here I may be allowed to enter into some details. The two or three main
ideas which constitute the basis of the social theory of the United States were first
combined in the Northern English colonies, more generally denominated the States of New
England. The principles of New England spread at first to the neighboring states; they
then passed successively to the more distant ones; and at length they imbued the whole
Confederation. They now extend their influence beyond its limits over the whole American
world. The civilization of New England has been like a beacon lit upon a hill, which,
after it has diffused its warmth around, tinges the distant horizon with its glow.

The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the circumstances
attending it were singular and original. The large majority of colonies have been first
inhabited either by men without education and without resources, driven by their poverty
and their misconduct from the land which gave them birth, or by speculators and
adventurers greedy of gain. Some settlements cannot even boast so honorable an origin; St.
Domingo was founded by buccaneers; and the criminal courts of England originally supplied
the population of Australia.

The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all belonged to
the more independent classes of their native country. Their union on the soil of America
at once presented the singular phenomenon of a society containing neither lords nor common
people, neither rich nor poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a
greater mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own time.
All, without a single exception, had received a good education, and many of them were
known in Europe for their talents and their acquirements. The other colonies had been
founded by adventurers without family; the emigrants of New England brought with them the
best elements of order and moralitythey landed in the desert accompanied by their
wives and children. But what most especially distinguished them was the aim of their
undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity to leave their country; the social
position they abandoned was one to be regretted, and their means of subsistence were
certain. Nor did they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their
wealth; the call which summoned them from the comforts of their homes was purely
intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of exile their object was the
triumph of an idea.

The emigrants, or, as they deservedly styled themselves, the Pilgrims, belonged to that
English sect the austerity of whose principles had acquired for them the name of Puritans.
Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with
the most absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which had
aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the Government of the
mother-country, and disgusted by the habits of a society opposed to the rigor of their own
principles, the Puritans went forth to seek some rude and unfrequented part of the world,
where they could live according to their Own opinions, and worship God in freedom.

A few quotations will throw more light upon the spirit of these pious adventurers than
all we can say of them. Nathaniel Morton, the historian of the first years of the
settlement, thus opens his subject:

"Gentle Reader,I have for some length of time looked upon it as a duty
incumbent, especially on the immediate successors of those that have had so large
experience of those many memorable and signal demonstrations of God's goodness, viz., the
first beginners of this Plantation in New England, to commit to writing his gracious
dispensations on that behalf; having so many inducements thereunto, not onely otherwise
but so plentifully in the Sacred Scriptures: that so, what we have seen, and what our
fathers have told us (Psalm lxxviii. 3, 4), we may not hide from our children, showing to
the generations to come the praises of the Lord; that especially the seed of Abraham his
servant, and the children of Jacob his chosen (Psalm cv. 5, 6), may remember his
marvellous works in the beginning and progress of the planting of New England, his wonders
and the judgments of his mouth; how that God brought a vine into this wilderness; that he
cast out the heathen, and planted it; that he made room for it and caused it to take deep
root; and it filled the land (Psalm lxxx. 8, 9). And not onely so, but also that he hath
guided his people by his strength to his holy
habitation and planted them in the mountain of his inheritance in respect of precious
Gospel enjoyments: and that as especially God may have the glory of all unto whom it is
most due; so also some rays of glory may reach the names of those blessed Saints that were
the main instruments and the beginning of this happy enterprise."

It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary feeling of
religious awe; it breathes the very savor of Gospel antiquity. The sincerity of the author
heightens his power of language. The band which to his eyes was a mere party of
adventurers gone forth to seek their fortune beyond seas appears to the reader as the germ
of a great nation wafted by Providence to a predestined
shore.

The author thus continues his narrative of the departure of the first pilgrim:

"So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their
resting-place for above eleven years; but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers
here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their
dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. xi. 16), and therein
quieted their spirits. When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things
ready; and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and
sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night
was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian
discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they went on
board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and
mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what
tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry
of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears.
But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loth to depart,
their Reverend Pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks
commended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with
mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be
the last leave to many of them."

The emigrants were about 150 in number, including the women and the children. Their
object was to plant a colony on the shares of the Hudson; but after having been driven
about for some time in the Atlantic Ocean, they were forced to land on that arid coast of
New England which is now the site of the town of Plymouth. The rock is still shown on
which the pilgrims disembarked.

"But before we pass on," continues our historian,

"let the reader with me make a pause and seriously consider this poor people's
present condition, the more to be raised up to admiration of God's goodness towards them
in their preservation: for being now passed the vast ocean, and, a sea of troubles before
them in expectation, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or
refresh them, no houses, or much less towns to repair unto to seek for succour: and for
the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be
sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known
places, much more to search unknown coasts. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and
desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts, and wilde men? and what multitudes of them
there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward
to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object;
for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weather-beaten face, and the
whole country full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew; if they
looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a
main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world."

It must not be imagined that the piety of the Puritans was of a merely speculative
kind, or that it took no cognizance of the course of worldly affairs. Puritanism, as I have already remarked, was scarcely less a political
than a religious doctrine. No sooner had the emigrants landed on the barren
coast described by Nathaniel Morton than it was their first care to constitute a society,
by passing the following Act:

"In the name of God. Amen. We, whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects
of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, etc., etc., Having undertaken for the glory of
God, and advancement of the Christian Faith, and the honour of our King and country, a
voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; Do by these presents
solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation,
and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute and frame
such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to
time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony:
unto which we promise all due submission and obedience," etc.

This happened in 1620, and from that time forwards the emigration went on. The
religious and political passions which ravaged the British Empire during the whole reign
of Charles I drove fresh crowds of sectarians every year to the shores of America. In
England the stronghold of Puritanism was in the middle classes, and it was from the middle
classes that the majority of the emigrants came. The population of New England increased
rapidly; and whilst the hierarchy of rank despotically classed the inhabitants of the
mother-country, the colony continued to present the novel spectacle of a community
homogeneous in all its parts. A democracy, more perfect than any which antiquity had
dreamt of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an ancient feudal society.

[It is] difficult to detect the link which connected the emigrants with the land of
their forefathers in studying the earliest historical and legislative records of New
England. They exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded
peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance
was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and, at the same time more instructive,
than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social
problem which the United States now present to the world is to be found.

Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially characteristic, the code of laws
promulgated by the little State of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut
begin with the penal laws, and, strange to say, they borrow their provisions from the text
of Holy Writ. "Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord," says the
preamble of the Code, "shall surely be put to death." This is followed by ten or
twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an
outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be expiated by the same penalty. The
legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus applied to an enlightened and
moral community. The consequence was that the punishment of death was never more
frequently prescribed by the statute, and never more rarely enforced towards the guilty.

The chief care of the legislators, in this body of penal laws, was the maintenance of
orderly conduct and good morals in the community: they constantly invaded the domain of
conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure. The
reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse
between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to
inflict a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage on the misdemeanants; and if the
records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not
unfrequent. We find a sentence bearing date the first of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and
reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing
herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes
idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers are forbidden to furnish more than a
certain quantity of liquor to each consumer; and simple lying, whenever it may be
injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely
forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself upheld in
Europe, renders attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with
severe punishment, and even with death, the Christians who chose to worship God according
to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes indeed the zeal of his enactments induces
him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same
Code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical
and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all
the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and
more puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check
the worldly luxury of long hair.

These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of
our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is
often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal
legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow sectarian spirit, and of those
religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among
the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred
years ago, is still ahead of the liberties of our age. The general principles which are
the groundwork of modern constitutionsprinciples which were imperfectly known in
Europe, and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, in the seventeenth
centurywere all recognized and determined by the laws of New England: the
intervention of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility
of authorities, personal liberty, and trial by jury, were all positively established
without discussion. From these fruitful principles consequences have been derived and
applications have been made such as no nation in Europe has yet ventured to attempt.

In studying the laws which were promulgated at this first era of the American
republics, it is impossible not to be struck by the remarkable acquaintance with the
science of government and the advanced theory of legislation which they display. The ideas
there formed of the duties of society towards its members are evidently much loftier and
more comprehensive than those of the European legislators at that time: obligations were
there imposed which were elsewhere slighted. In the States of New England, from the first,
the condition of the poor was provided for; strict measures were taken for the maintenance
of roads, and surveyors were appointed to attend to them; registers were established in
every parish, in which the results of public deliberations, and the births, deaths, and
marriages of the citizens were entered; clerks were directed to keep these registers;
officers were charged with the administration of vacant inheritances, and with the
arbitration of litigated landmarks; and many others were created whose chief functions
were the maintenance of public order in the community. The law enters into a thousand
useful provisions for a number of social wants which are at present very inadequately felt
in France.

But it is by the attention it pays to Public Education that the original character of
American civilization is at once placed in the clearest light. "It being," says
the law, "one chief project of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scripture
by persuading from the use of tongues, to the end that learning may not be buried in the
graves of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our
endeavors..." Here follow clauses establishing schools in every township, and
obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to support them. Schools of a
superior kind were founded in the same manner in the more populous districts. The
municipal authorities were bound to enforce the sending of children to school by their
parents; they were empowered to inflict fines upon all who refused compliance; and in case
of continued resistance society assumed the place of the parent, took possession of the
child, and deprived the father of those natural rights which he used to so bad a purpose.
The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America
religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to
civil freedom.

If, after having cast a rapid glance over the state of American society in 1650, we
turn to the condition of Europe, and more especially to that of the Continent, at the same
period, we cannot fail to be struck with astonishment. On the Continent of Europe, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, absolute monarchy had everywhere triumphed over the
ruins of the oligarchical and feudal liberties of the Middle Ages. Never were the notions
of right more completely confounded than in the midst of the splendor and literature of
Europe; never was there less political activity among the people; never were the
principles of true freedom less widely circulated; and at that very time those principles,
which were scorned or unknown by the nations of Europe, were proclaimed in the deserts of
the New World, and were accepted as the future creed of a great people. The boldest
theories of the human reason were put into practice by a community so humble that not a
statesman condescended to attend to it; and a legislation without a precedent was produced
offhand by the imagination of the citizens. In the bosom of this obscure democracy, which
had as yet brought forth neither generals, nor philosophers, nor authors, a man might
stand up in the face of a free people and pronounce the following fine definition of
liberty.

"Nor would I have you to mistake in the point of your own liberty. There is a
liberty of a corrupt nature which is effected both by men and beasts to do what they list,
and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this
liberty 'summus omnes deteriores': 'tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the
ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty
which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is
lust and good: for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives and
whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is
maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority set over you will, in
all administrations for your good, be quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a
disposition to shake off the yoke and lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the
honor and power of authority."

The remarks I have made will suffice to display the character of Anglo-American
civilization in its true light. It is the result and this should be constantly present to
the mind of two distinct elements, which in other places have been in frequent hostility,
but which in America have been admirably incorporated and combined with one another. I
allude to the spirit of Religion and free spirit of Liberty.

The settlers of New England were at the same time ardent sectarians and daring
innovators. Narrow as the limits of some of their religious opinions were, they were
entirely free from political prejudices. Hence arose two tendencies, distinct but not
opposite, which are constantly discernible in the manners as well as in the laws of the
country.

It might be imagined that men who sacrificed their friends, their family, and their
native land to a religious conviction were absorbed in the pursuit of the intellectual
advantages which they purchased at so dear a rate. The energy, however, with which they
strove for the acquirement of wealth, moral enjoyment, and the comforts as well as
liberties of the world, is scarcely inferior to that with which they devoted themselves to
Heaven.

Political principles and all human laws and institutions were moulded and altered at
their pleasure; the barriers of the society in which they were born were broken down
before them; the old principles which had governed the world for ages were no more; a path
without a turn and a field without an horizon were opened to the exploring and ardent
curiosity of man: but at the limits of the political world he checks his researches, he
discreetly lays aside the use of his most formidable faculties, he no longer consents to
doubt or to innovate, but carefully abstaining from raising the curtain of the sanctuary,
he yields with submissive respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the moral
world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world
everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed: in the one is a passive, though a
voluntary, obedience; in the other an independence scornful of experience and jealous of
authority.

These two tendencies, apparently so discrepant, are far from conflicting; they advance
together, and mutually support each other. Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a
noble exercise to the faculties of man, and that the political world is a field prepared
by the Creator for the efforts of the intelligence. Contented with the freedom and the
power which it enjoys in its own sphere, and with the place which it occupies, the empire
of religion is never more surely established than when it reigns in the hearts of men
unsupported by aught beside its native strength. Religion is no less the companion of
liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine
source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion,
and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.